Tous les chapitres de : Chapitre 51 - Chapitre 60

The battlefield was chaos for anyone else. For me, it was a map. Every scream, every clash of steel, every drop of blood cut through the night like signals only I knew how to read. The others fought like storms, Nora with her dragon trembling beneath her skin, Caelum all claws and fury, Elias burning everything in his path. But me? I was the shadow in between. I slipped through the trees, silent as smoke, my senses sharp. The mercenaries weren’t just swinging wildly. Their blades glinted with silver and dragonsteel, their movements too measured. Each squad pressed in, retreated, then pressed again, like testing the strength of a fortress wall. They weren’t here to pass a trial. They weren’t here to win. They were here to study us. And from the corner of the battlefield, I saw him. A man standing just beyond the glow of firelight, armored in darker steel, helmet off, face calm. Too calm. His eyes tracked Nora’s every move. Not Caelum. Not Elias. Not me. Her. The leader. My fangs ach

The forest went still in the wake of her flames, as if even the trees knew better than to breathe. Smoke curled from blackened trunks, the ground cracked and molten, and silence pressed heavy, broken only by the dying hiss of fire and our ragged breaths. But I couldn’t feel the quiet. Not with her standing there. Scales melted from her trembling body, yet the fire didn’t leave. It veined beneath her skin in faint golden lines that pulsed with every heartbeat. Heat shimmered in the air, brushing my burned palms. She had transformed. A dragon hd stood before me. And gods help me, I wanted to touch her. The fire I’d kept chained for years ached like an untended wound. It didn’t want control anymore. It wanted her. My flame reached for hers the way a starving man reaches for bread. I’d wielded power enough to bring men to their knees, but compared to what burned in her veins, I was nothing. And still, the hunger in me blazed hotter. She stumbled, curls wild, soot streaking her cheek,

The stink of him clung to her. Even after the fight, even with mercenary blood thick in the air, even with my ribs burning where dragonsteel had kissed me, I couldn’t smell anything else. Elias. His fire. His fucking hands all over her. My wolf prowled under my skin, claws dragging against my ribs, demanding I rip out his throat for daring to touch what was mine. Mine. The word pulsed hot and steady through me, the bond of the Hunter’s Moon clawing deeper every time I looked at her. I’d tried to fight it, tried to bury it under rage and blood and the chaos of the Trial, but there was no escaping it. The moon had chosen, had branded her scent into me so deeply I could find her blindfolded, bound, thrown into the deepest pit of this cursed forest. She was my mate. And he touched her. I could smell it. Feel it. Her skin carried his heat like a brand, her lips still swollen, her eyes refusing to meet mine when I demanded the truth. She thought she could lie to me. She thought she coul

The stone door yawned open with a groan that shook dust from the vaulted ceiling, the glow of Elias’s Concord Sigil stretching beneath our feet like a living tether. The others hesitated, watching me as though I’d been the one who spoke the command word, when all I’d done was breathe. The arch whispered of unity, and maybe for once I needed to stop pretending I didn’t know what that meant.I turned to them, palms damp, throat tight. My dragon pressed against my ribs like it wanted out, but this wasn’t a moment for fire. This was for me. “If we’re going to survive this, there have to be rules,” I said, my voice steadier than I felt.Caelum’s eyes narrowed, wolf still restless, golden edges burning in the dark. “Rules?” His tone made it sound like a curse.

The crypt’s silence pressed in on me long after Lucien’s shadows receded. My skin still burned where his mouth had been, where his fangs had broken through and drawn blood, where his body had forced mine to bend and break into something reckless and unrecognizable. I could feel Elias on me, Caelum in me, and now Lucien carved into my veins. Each of them had left their mark, and I wasn’t sure how much of me was left untouched.I wrapped my arms around myself, shaking, my dragon prowling under my skin like it knew something I didn’t. She wasn’t ashamed. She reveled in it, in the fire and fury and the claiming. But I was terrified, because I didn’t know where she ended and I began anymore.The Trial was relentless. The stone beneath me shifted, a low groan reverberating through the crypt like the world itself wanted to tear apart. Walls stretched and twisted, illusions bending reality into new shapes. I couldn’t tell if I was in the Gauntlet still, or inside my own breaking mind. Every t